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With the final snaps of the Chicago Bears’ 2010 season over, the focus now shifts towards the offseason. During the 2011 season, head coach Lovie Smith will be in the final season of his contract.

A few weeks ago there were people calling for Lovie to receive a contract extension past next season. And that came roughly 12 months after an enormous majority of Bears’ fans were calling for him to be fired.

A year ago, after the Bears finished 7-9, the McCaskey family decided to retain Lovie’s services. An unpopular move at the time that might have been made for financial reasons. With the fate of the 2011 NFL season up in the air, some thought the McCaskeys didn’t want to pay for two head coaches not to coach the Bears next season.

“I was adamant last week, and three weeks ago,” Bears analyst Hub Arkush said on the Danny Mac Show. “I think I used the word ignorant, I can’t imagine why they would extend Lovie’s contract, because there’s no need to. It’s not a punishment.”

The fact is that Lovie has had enough success to keep his job, but also hasn’t done enough to earn an extension. With Lovie still under contract for the 2011 season, the organization will have one more year to evaluate their head coach.

“He’s going to make five and a half million dollars,” Arkush said. “He’s going to be one of the five, six, seven highest paid coaches in the league. There’s no reason to extend him right now and I think yesterday just gave you a reminder of a lot of the issues they still have to answer.”

There’s an old adage that nothing in sports is ever as good or bad as it seems. And using that as a way to gauge the 2010 season, the beast way to make contract decisions might be to let the dust settle on the season, and reevaluate them when they need to be reevaluated. For example, before the 2012 NFL season.